Beauty in Emptiness
by SabaceanBabe
Summary: Zoe's gotta see these, he whispered, colored lights dazzling his eyes. Heck, if she liked the show well enough, he might even get lucky...


Fandom: Firefly

Remix Story and Author: **Beauty in Emptiness** by SabaceanBabe

Rated: pg

Word count: 1,625

Spoilers: none to speak of

Author's note: yay for my first Firefly fic! I've been wanting to get my feet wet in that fandom for a while, but just couldn't do it, for some reason. The love was there, but the motivation was missing, I guess. But when I read hossgal's _Empty Spaces_, I was there. Idiot that I am, I thought I looked through the previously remixed fics for one that hadn't been done before, but it turns out I picked the one that had. Anyway, it turned out okay, in the end, since what I did was nothing like what the previous remixer had done. Whew! A big thank you goes out to my favorite beta, un4scene. She didn't even complain about the short notice. :P

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Wash stared out at the black emptiness of space, lost in thought. Well, maybe not so much lost in thought as lost in the absence of thought. It had been a long day and he was just about ready for it to be over. All he wanted was to not have to think for a bit, to not have to pay attention to his surroundings. Maybe even relax. Relaxing would be good.

A telltale on _Serenity_'s main control panel suddenly flashed a warning, reflecting oddly from the plastic skin of a small stegosaurus. His dream of nothing slipping away, Wash sighed and flipped a switch, killing the orange light and bringing up the appropriate display. A scan told him that there was nothing to get excited about - just a spike in the ambient gamma radiation, but nowhere near strong enough to breach the hull - and he leaned back in his chair. This part of space was just as empty as it had earlier appeared to be and he set the autopilot - part of not thinking involved not having to make minor adjustments to course or speed.

Satisfied that all was as it should be, Wash engaged in a little of that relaxing thing, evidenced by the way he put his feet up on the console - careful not to disturb any dinosaurs or palm trees - and his hands behind his head, elbows wide.

He studied the prehistoric world beyond the toes of his worn boots as a half smile played on his lips. Most of the dinosaurs and all of the trees had been with him for years, carried from berth to berth, but the stegosaurus... She was a gift from Zoe, one of Wash's most precious possessions. The dinosaur, not the woman. God help anyone who made the mistake of thinking Zoe actually belonged to him. Wash's smile widened into a full-blown grin at the thought of his beautiful Zoe setting someone straight. Preferably Jayne.

A streak of gold light shot past _Serenity_, back to front, catching and holding Wash's attention. It quickly dissipated, only to be followed by another, this one a pale green, and then another. Before long, streaks and ribbons of light, both bright and dim, intense and insubstantial, danced and played along the hull.

Wash's feet hit the deck. "Willowisps..." He stared, entranced by the colorful and random display. A glance at the screen on his control panel confirmed that they were still surrounded by low-level gamma radiation, the favorite playground of the - creatures? microorganisms? - called willowisps, named for mythical beings on Earth-That-Was. He'd only seen them once before, years ago, but he'd been just as enchanted then as he was now.

"Zoe's gotta see these," he whispered, colored lights dazzling his eyes. Heck, if she liked the show well enough, he might even get lucky...

It took him a few minutes, but Wash finally found her in the galley. All the dishes had long since been cleared away following the evening meal and had been replaced on the table by the various components, large and small, of a rifle. Zoe was bent low over the table and its load of parts, precisely placed on the striped tablecloth. In the dim light, she concentrated on her work, reaching for a piece that was not-quite out of reach. Her action had the happy consequence of pulling the fabric of both shirt and trousers tight as she stretched; Wash enjoyed that display even more than he had the show put on by the willowisps.

She didn't seem to be aware of his presence as she fought to seat the piece she had just retrieved into its proper place in the disassembled weapon, but he couldn't see her face and so couldn't be sure. Zoe always seemed to know where he was, though... Just in case, Wash shuffled his feet deliberately as he stepped into the room - sneaking up on his warrior woman was just plain suicidal and he really didn't have a big desire to die.

When he was close enough to touch her, to smell the unique perfume that was Zoe - clean soap and cosmoline and just the slightest whiff of gunpowder - he reached out to rest both hands on her shoulders, then skimmed his palms lightly up her long neck to thread his fingers into her loosely bound hair, massaging. He was just about to lean in and nibble at her neck when in a flash she was gone.

Wash had seen Zoe move quickly before - the woman moved like lightning, when she wanted to - but he'd never before been the cause. He still felt her soft skin and hair under his palms, but she was on the other side of the table from him, her abruptly abandoned chair rocking on two legs, undecided as to whether to tumble completely over or stabilize. Several small parts had skittered across the table, a few to the floor, and the partially reassembled rifle dangled over the edge but refused to fall.

Instinctively, Wash stepped back and raised his hands in the universal sign of surrender. The graceful way she had moved had sent a spike of pure heat to his groin, but when he finally lifted his gaze from the rifle to meet his wife's eyes, he shriveled a little, both inside and out. _Damage control. Gotta do some damage control..._ "Honeybee, I'm sorry. I did-"

Her eyes were wide and her breathing fast and she held herself very, very still. Scary still. "I told you last time. Don't do that." She stared at Wash and he couldn't get a handle on what was in her eyes. After a couple of extremely long seconds, she blinked. "Husband," a slight relaxation of posture and muscles, "don't you have some pilot things to do?"

Wash swallowed and slowly lowered his hands, feeling as though he'd just received a reprieve from the executioner. "Lamby-kin, I was actually just on my way back to the flight deck. I..." His eyes focused on her hands, splayed out on the table, before returning to her flushed face. "I have things, pilot things, to do." Her eyes were still cold and flat. "On the flight deck."

Dreams of getting lucky having died with a pathetic whimper, Wash turned to leave, but then he turned back, almost tripping over his own feet. "I love you, you know that." He hated it when she got like this, put a wall up between them. "You do, don't you?"

Zoe closed her eyes and sucked in a deep breath, visibly relaxing as she straightened. "Yes, I do."

He released the breath he hadn't realized he'd been holding. Zoe turned and pulled the tablecloth flat again, then bent to retrieve the parts of her rifle that had fallen to the deck. She frowned when she surveyed those that remained on the table and gently shifted the partially reassembled weapon to a safer position, and Wash understood that he had been dismissed. She didn't mean it to be hurtful, he knew that, just as he knew that they were okay again, but that didn't stop it from hurting anyway.

He backed out of the room, his good mood evaporated to nothing as quickly as the willowisps that had sent him here in the first place.

Back on the flight deck, Wash watched the willowisps dance. He had left _Serenity_ on autopilot and turned down all the lights, even dimming the instrument panel, so that the only real illumination was that of the 'wisps. Without the competition of the reds and blues of his instrumentation and the whiter light from the overheads, the show was even more dazzling than before - greens and purples and golds, all shifting and playing around _Serenity_.

Wash couldn't push the thought from his head that Zoe was in some ways similar to the willowisps that danced beyond the viewscreen. Corny it might be, but there was an elusive quality about her, born of something that could be cold and deadly if you didn't have the right shielding, but that lit up his world at unexpected times and in unexpected ways.

He knew it when she came up behind him. She didn't say anything and didn't touch him right away, but still he knew. He always knew when Zoe was there, an electric tingle in his skin. He heard her sharp intake of breath when she finally noticed the 'wisps that surrounded the Firefly, just before she mimicked his earlier action, stroking her hands from his shoulders to his neck to the base of his skull in mute apology.

She began to massage his neck and the back of his head, but he reached up and grabbed her wrists, stopping her. Instead, he pulled her around and down onto his lap, put his arms around her. Settling in - which caused some pretty interesting sensations - she put an arm around his shoulders and laid her head down on top of his. They sat that way for a while, just watching the 'wisps.

They watched the 'wisps dance and play until the interesting sensations caused by having his beautiful wife sit in his lap became too much for Wash. He moved his head the tiny bit needed to brush his lips along the long column of her throat and she shifted to allow him better access, so he grazed his teeth against her soft skin.

As Zoe's hands gripped the sides of his head to pull him away from her throat, to pull his mouth up to hers, the willowisps were forgotten, left to play on their own, completely uninterested in whether or not they had an audience.


End file.
